Every Wednesday morning at 7:40am local time, the #3 train pulls out of Beijing train station and arrives six days later in Moscow.
Every Wednesday of every week of the year. Could I be on it one Wednesday?
I’ve been keeping an eye on this train, known as the Trains Mongolian Express for years now. It joins the Trans Siberian Express tracks in Udan-Ude, just north of the Russian/Mongolian border.
Now here we are, Louise, Sebastian and myself, planning a return trip to the UK for Christmas. Louise and Sebastian are going out a couple of weeks early via California and Florida. I was to meet up with them by flying direct to London.
I’m very much looking forward to going back to the UK for a visit, though dreading that 24 hour flight. However, this might be just the opportunity I was looking for to resurrect the Trans-Mongolian train journey, and what better time to see Siberia proper than in winter? It seems so obvious. After discussing with Louise, I started to make some tentative inquiries about tickets and visas.
At that time, the initial plan was to fly to Beijing, take the train to Moscow and then fly on to London. But when I got out the world map, dusting it off as you do when one hasn’t traveled for some time, I discovered train tracks all over the place. In fact, From Moscow it extended west all the way to London, the final leg thanks to the Eurostar. East of Moscow was the route of the Trans-Siberian/Mongolian Express. On the map, I followed a continuous train line from Moscow, continuing east across Russia to Ulan-Ude in Siberia. From here, turning abruptly south, and down to Mongolia, from there, cross the Chinese border and down into Beijing. It then snaked all the way through the middle of China to its final frontier; Vietnam. Once across the border, still not a break anywhere, the track continued on to Hanoi and then kept going further! – following the coast all the way down to Ho Chi Minh City (formally Saigon).
And that was it. Literally, the end of the track. If one wished to continue traveling it would need to be by plane, bus, car, by feet or boat. Through the haze of my red wine, it became clear to me that Ho Chi Minh City should be the start of my journey. If possible, I should fly direct into Ho Chi Minh City and get on a train and stay on those tracks all the way through to London. In fact why not continue and complete the journey to my actual final destination: Worcester.
How crazy is this really? Not the perfect idea of a holiday for most people, but for me its completely irresistible.
So lets do it.
I called a number of travel agents over the next few next days only to discover that its either amazingly overpriced and/or not really possible for a single travel agent to organize a journey such as this. Good thing too, why let them have all the fun. With the internet available I found I could locate all the train timetables from all the countries, together with relevant local ticket agents. Now all I needed was a fist full of visas, a bunch of train tickets from obscure locations, a small bag of money and I’d be set…
That was back in August ’08 and it is some months later now that I find I only have about half the train tickets, a promise of a some visas and mounting list of things to work out… clearly the planning part is a work in progress and will probably take up all the time available before departure.
More soon…
Now read the itinerary…